New York City Orders Twenty Churches To Shut Down Homeless Shelters

NEW YORK (CBS) ― City officials have ordered 22 New York churches to stop providing beds to homeless people.
With temperatures well below freezing early Saturday, the churches must obey a city rule requiring faith-based shelters to be open at least five days a week — or not at all.
Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as a link with the city, said he had to tell the churches they no longer qualify.
He said hundreds of people now won’t have a place to sleep.

This is monumentally stupid. It seems to me that if a church can open its doors and get some people off the streets for even one night that’s a good thing. But apparently the bureaucrats in New York think otherwise, though I wonder what their motivation is? Since this targets only faith-based organizations, could this be a way to push private relief efforts out of the way of government-run relief efforts? It’s difficult to imagine anyone being that cold hearted and crass, but never underestimate the audacity of bureaucrats who make $100,000/year spending our money. And really, what other possible motivation is there?
This same sort of “all or nothing” mentality infects a lot of liberal thinking, as a matter of fact. Look at health care, for instance. Now I don’t think anyone would argue that the present system is perfect, or that it can’t be improved, but liberals seem to think that because it is not perfect and because it is not necessarily 100% accessible to every single citizen in the country it should be shut down and replaced with an entirely government-run system.
Which is a bit like killing a gnat with a sledgehammer.